


January 2nd, 1938

by kristophine



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Historical, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-02
Updated: 2018-01-02
Packaged: 2019-02-27 11:39:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13247472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kristophine/pseuds/kristophine
Summary: “Stevie!”Steve frowned harder down at the paper.“Steve!” Bucky dropped down on the floor next to him. “Get a look at this!”Grudgingly, Steve glanced up, and found himself laughing. “Youdidn’t.”





	January 2nd, 1938

**Author's Note:**

> [This issue of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle](https://bklyn.newspapers.com/image/52623569) counts as a third character.

“Stevie!”

Steve frowned harder down at the paper.

“Steve!” Bucky dropped down on the floor next to him. “Get a look at this!”

Grudgingly, Steve glanced up, and found himself laughing. “You _didn’t._ ”

It was a stupid idea, real bone-headed, but damn if Buck hadn’t gone out and gotten himself a new hat. Bucky grinned at him, reaching up to cock it down over one eye. “I look pretty sharp, don’t I?”

“You were _saving,_ ” said Steve, dropping the paper and sprawling out backwards, chilly in just his underthings. “You were going to use that money for something sensible. I heard you say it just yesterday, right here in this room, you said, _Steve, I’m going to start some savings._ ”

“Yeah, well, that was before I met this beauty.” Bucky waggled his eyebrows, spinning the hat on one finger before donning it again. “New year, new headwear.”

“That was yesterday. Is this because of Cagney? I should have put you on a leash.”

“Can I help it if the big stars have a certain style?” Bucky made kissy-faces at him. “Style that looks _good_ on me, and that the dames love.”

“They love not being called _the dames_ like they’re all a bunch of—bunch of army ants.”

Bucky rolled his eyes. “Go figure you’d have to ruin a perfectly good hat.”

“No, _you_ did that, when you put it on your head. It’ll never be the same. Exposed to all the nonsense under it.”

Bucky nodded at the paper. “Anything interesting?”

“Not much.” Too much; things were sour as hell in Spain, and Europe was spoiling for a fight, anyone could tell. “Helen Keller’s asking Japan for peace.”

“Well, good luck to her on that. Good funnies?”

“Yeah, here.” Steve sifted out the comics and handed them over. “I want those back when you’re done with them.”

“Sure.” Bucky leaned back against the couch. “You got something against comfort? Why are you sitting on the floor?”

Steve shrugged. “Back’s bugging me.”

“Okay.” Bucky left it at that, holding out the paper so it crackled and rustled, and whistled, long and low. “Looks like Don Dixon’s having grand adventures again—”

“Shut up.”

“Giving you palpitations that his buddy’s in trouble?” Bucky leaned forward, dangling his arms over the side of the couch.

“Take off that stupid hat,” muttered Steve, flicking to the next page, trying to muster interest in which local doctors were going a cruise with their wives.

“It’s not stupid!” Bucky patted it. “It’s a fine hat.”

The thing about the serial comics—the thing Steve loved, that had him drawing his own pale imitations of them in the margins—was that, in a comic, everyone had exactly the bodies that they were meant to have: the men (at least the _heroes)_ were all broad-shouldered, rippling muscles carefully outlined in bold ink.

And if there was something—special—about strips like that day’s, where the hero was leaning down to hold his injured friend, tenderly—that was nobody’s business but his. Nobody’s damn business.

“You’re inside.” Flipped another page with more than necessary emphasis. “Don’t need a hat indoors, you’re just being a jerk.”

Bucky pulled off the hat and spun it around his finger again. God, the girls _died_ over those idiot tricks of his.

“You know what? Make me.”

Steve looked up, incredulous, as Bucky firmly clapped it back on his head. “You’ve got to be kidding me!”

“Do I look like I’m kidding?” Bucky ruined the effect by sticking out his tongue.

“You’re unbelievable.” Steve stared at him, torn between laughing and smacking the hat off his head. “It’s _disrespectful,_ you should take the damn thing off. You’ll have more than enough time to dazzle _the dames_ when you go out tonight.”

“Don’t think I feel like it.” Bucky lounged ostentatiously, lying back on the couch and propping his feet up on the armrest. “Since you don’t got the spine to stop me.”

“I’ll show you the spine!” And just like that, even as he said it, Steve profoundly regretted being so easy to bait. That didn’t stop him from lunging up, flinging away the paper, tackling Bucky off the couch.

Bucky was ready for him, though, and turned it into a spin that brought Steve under him, both of them laughing and gasping, elbows and knees that would bruise going every which way. The hat flew off his head, rolling away to rest against a leg of the table.

There was a moment where Bucky could have gotten up, dusted himself off. Made a joke about his hat. Except—instead of doing that, he stayed where he was, on top of Steve. Body pressing Steve into the ground, propped up on his elbows just enough that Steve wasn’t crushed.

Steve had turned his head to watch the hat roll, and as he turned to look back at Bucky, he became aware in what felt like slow-motion of how Bucky was staring down at him. Lips parted, breathing heavy.

Steve couldn’t look away as Bucky’s tongue darted out, licking his lips.

“Steve,” murmured Bucky. So softly. The warmth of him surrounded Steve completely—arms braced to either side of Steve’s face—and Steve couldn’t help it, pushing up into him, dissolving into the heat.

When Bucky leaned down, just barely, just enough, Bucky’s eyes drifted closed; Steve closed his, too, so that the shock of the first kiss came to him blind.

The kiss broke as Bucky started to shake, and Bucky ducked his head, hiding it in the curve of Steve’s neck. Steve could feel his lips, open against Steve’s skin, not in a kiss but in harsh, panting breaths.

He wasn’t sure which one of them started moving first. Soon enough, Bucky was grinding into him, hard against his leg, as he thrust back up against the perfect warmth of Bucky’s thigh. Bucky came first, silently, but his whole body tensing in a long trembling second, and then the pulses damp against Steve’s skin as they seeped through Bucky’s trousers.

Steve chased the feeling, pushing harder, gripping Bucky’s waist with his hands as the sensations built. Bucky turned his head just enough to— _bite_ Steve, on the earlobe, and Steve went rigid as it hit him, a white light behind his eyelids, blinding him.

They lay there in the silence afterwards, neither moving, neither willing to talk. Finally Bucky rolled off him, and they lay side by side, staring up at the ceiling.

Until Steve stole a glance over at Bucky, and realized that Bucky was watching him, something too huge and raw in his eyes.

Bucky closed his eyes and sucked in a breath, and then his hand crept out into the space between them and found Steve’s.

Steve looked back up at the ceiling, mind blank. There was the long crack where the water would come through at the far end in the winter; there was the smudge from when Bucky had been throwing a ball around the apartment the last summer; he couldn’t make sense of it, any of it.

But he tightened his fingers around Buck’s, anyway.

“It’s a good hat,” Steve said, and realized he was starting to smile.


End file.
